296 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [November i, 1888. 
introduced into the more backward or less favour- 
ably fituated tracts of country. Attention was directed 
to this by means of agricultural shows and in other 
wajs. There is nothing, I think, which more con- 
vincingly shows the apathy and want of enterprise 
among the agricultural population of South India, 
than the fact that the people over large tracts of 
country will persist in sowing year after year seed 
of inferior varieties of farm crops when frequently 
seed of better varieties could be got within a distance 
of 20 or 30 miles at an additional expense of only 
the carriage of the seed. It must, however, always 
be remembered that the native cultivator has to 
depend chiefly on his own resources in getting fresh 
seed as there are no field seedsmen in India as 
there are in Europe. — Indian Agriculturist. 
« ; 
AGRICULTURE IN CHINA. 
There will be an immense field for business in the in- 
terior of China some day. The methods in vogue in 
all occupations are at present most primitive, and 
should afford scope for the introduction of modern 
tools and machinery. This is especially the case in 
connection with the cultivation of the soil, which is, 
of course, the chief occupation of the people. In this 
industry no progress has been made for centuries. 
There is great care, and minute details are attended 
to, but there is an extremely primitive knowledge of 
agricultural implements, and absolute ignorance of 
the principal of the rotation of crops, and the adapt- 
ation of soils to particular grains. The fields are cul- 
tivated with as much watchfulness and care as we 
bestow 011 gardens. When the crop is ripe it is 
gathered by hand, and not a straw or a leaf is over- 
looked or allowed to remain. In the vicinity of Pekin, 
the principal crops, besides fruits and vegetables 
are wheat, barley, millet, beans, Indian com, hemp, 
rice, cotton and some tobacco. The fruit an vege- 
tables comprise almost all the kinds that are found 
in Western countries. 
In irrigating his land the farmer uses many devices. 
Where running water is at hand he turns it to advan- 
tage by directing it over his fields in large channels, 
banked in with clay, and subdivided into smaller and 
smaller streamlets, until every part of the ground has 
been reached. If no running water is found, wells are 
dug and water is drawn up by hand and poured into the 
main ditches, which are subdivided into numerous 
smaller ones. Holes are dug in which rain water accu- 
mulates, which is baled out when needed. The raising 
of this water is in most cases, especially in the vicinity 
of Peking, done very laboriously by hand. Windmills, 
of which there is not one around Peking (if any where in 
China), might be used for this purpose with great 
increase of efficiency and saving of human labour, 
Chinese agricultural implements are of the rudest 
character. They are, chiefly, the plough, the hoe, the 
harrow, the rake, and the stone roller. The plough is 
simply a broad blade fastened to a rough handle, guided 
by a man and drawn by teams of the most miscellaneous 
description ; it cuts a furrow never more than six inches 
deep, and frequently only two or three. The teams 
arc. made up of horses, donkeys, mules, bullocks, and 
human beings, it being not unusual to see a man or 
boy, and any one or more of the animals above named 
drawing the s;nne plough. Chinese farmers measure 
the depth of the furrow by the fingers, and frequently 
speak of ploughing only two or three fingers deep. The 
reason of this seems to lie in the difficulty of making a 
deeper furrow with their ploughs and not because they 
are unaware of the advantage of it. The hoe is a 
much more effective tool, audit is with this that they 
work between the furrows of grain after it has 
sprouted. 
Foreign agricultural implements, especially ploughs, 
might be introduced with good effect among the 
Chinese, except thai the price would deter all but very 
few from bnyiricr them. A Chinese plough can be 
bought for 8«. or 10*. and smaller tools in proportion. 
There are no great stores devoted to the sale of agri- 
cultural implements as with us, they being made by 
hand, either by 0 neighbouring blacksmith or by the 
farmer himself, as occasion demands. — British Trade 
Journal. [Much that is true of China is true of India. 
Both have immense populations, chronically poor. — Ed. | 
♦ 
" DAMPING-OFF " OF SEEDLINGS. 
The following extract is taken from an important 
and valuable series of articles from the pen of Professor 
Marshall Ward, now appearing in Nature, relating to 
the diseases of timber: — 
" In the seed-beds, [Beech is specially alluded to] it 
is often fir t noticeable that patches of seedlings 
here and there begin to fall over, as if they had been 
bitten or cut where the young stem and root join at 
the surface of the ground: on pulling up one of the 
injured seedlings the. 'collar,' or region common to 
stem and root will be found to be blackened, and either 
rotten or shrivelled, according to the dampness or dry- 
ness of the surface of the soil. Sometimes the whole 
of the young root will be rotting off before the first 
true leaves have emerged from between the cotyledons ; 
in other cases the collar only is rotten or shrivelled 
and the weight of the parts above ground causes them 
to fall prostrate on the surface of the soil ; in yet 
others the lower parts of the stem of the older 
seedling may be blackened, and dark flecks appear 
on the cotyledons and young leaves, which may 
also be turning brown and shrivelling up. If the 
weather is moist, c. g., during rainy May or June, 
the disease may be observed spreading rapidly from 
a given centre or centres, in ever-widening circles. 
It has also been noticed that if a moving body passes 
across a diseased patch into the neighbouring healthy 
seedlings, the disease in a few hours is observed spread- 
ing in its track. It has also been found that if seeds 
are again sown in the following season in a seed-bed 
which had previously contained many of the above 
diseased seedlings, the new seedlings will inevitably be 
killed by the ' damping-off.' As we shall see shortly, 
this is because the resting spores of the fungus remain 
dormant in the soil after the death of the seedlings. 
In other words, the disease is infectious, and spreads 
centrifugally from one diseased seedling to another, 
or from one crop to another; if the westher is moist 
and warm — ' muggy,' as it is often termed — such as 
often occurs in the cloudy days of a wet May or June, 
the spread of the disease may be so rapid that every 
plant in the bed is affected in the course of two or 
three days, and the whole sowing reduced to a putrid 
mass; in drier seasons and soils the spread of the in- 
fection may be slower, and only a patch here and there 
die off, the diseased shrivelling up rather than rotting." 
— Gardeners' Chronicle. 
Cinchona. — Two excellant papers by Mr. David 
Hooper were read by Dr. Thresh at the annual 
meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society which is re- 
printed further on in our Tropical Agriculturist. The 
subjects are " The Hybridization of Cinchona " 
and " Carthagena Cinchona." The Chemist and Drug- 
gist says : — Two authorities discussed the papers and 
showed how utterly the Indian Government has 
failed to meet the demands of the markets by 
cultivating species which do not afford barks that 
are liked by the quinine manufacturer. This em- 
phasises in a marked manner how wise the Java 
planters have been in latterly devoting themselves 
exclusively to those barks which are rich in quinine. 
Coal in Bobneo. — Up to the present the borings 
have only been shallow, not more than 25 feet, 
when the clay gave place to sand rock but it is 
hoped that larger beds will be found on Pulo 
Timbong where the coal yet found appears also 
to be of somewhat older formation. This latter 
burns well and clearly, and the Miners, who include 
some old Labuan hands, say the coal is equal to 
the best Labuan. It remains to be seen whether 
it can be found in quantity. — North Borneo Herald. 
1 If so, or even if good lignite is plentiful, Borneo 
may yet be a source of supply for Ceylon,— Et.J 
